I think that any Labour leader was going to struggle during the past twelve months - people seem to have treated Covid as the kind of national emergency where you don't criticise the Government much, and Johson has (deliberately / unwittingly) steered a course that has divided opposition between "cautious people unhappy with the death tolls" and "libertarians outraged at any kind of restrictions", which hasn't left much space for opposition.
And look how craven the media have been. I remember the days when politicians had to resign over minor things - but the news that Johnson had given a six figure sum of public money to the woman he'd been having a four year affair with (whilst his wife was getting cancer treatment) barely warranted a mention on page ninety four of most newspapers - it's going to be hard for any Leader Of The Opposition to cut through in those circumstances.
The thing in Starmer's favour is that there's no realistic alternative. A Nandy isn't going to keep the left onside any better than Starmer has managed - I don't think that any of the Corbyn loyalists are going to win across the people who deserted the party in 2019.
he's not instinctively in tune with the 'Red Wall'
How many Labour leaders would you say were "instinctively in tune" with the kind of Sun reader stereotype that people now refer to as "Red Wall"?
Certainly not one of the recent ones - I don't think that Blair was either but he managed to win those seats
I don't think that our Etonian Prime Minister is going to pass the Peter Mandelson "mushy peas" / "guacamole" test either, but he seems popular enough - even if the people of places like Hartlepool don't all spend their evenings building model buses out of wine boxes...
Frankly the trots need rooting out and binning rather than trying to keep them on side. In Hartlepooh they have tried to set up a silly northern independence party/Corbyn fanboy project. Let them all run off and join that.
Agreed - funny how quickly the #GTTO ("Get The Tories Out") crowd have been happy to splinter away into several other parties rather than uniting against the current Government - this performative whippet themed "Independence" party started by a bloke in Sussex, the Trade Unionionist & Socialist Coalition, the Judean People's Front etc
It might do Starmer good to be rid of the troublemakers
That knighthood probably costs him at least 10% of potential Labour voters
I don't know - given that the way that Corbyn's "unpatriotic" associations turned off a lot of people who'd previously voted Labour, I think that the knighthood may be a good shorthand way of reassuring them that he doesn't "HATE BRITAIN" (like the way that the tabloids have portrayed previous leaders)
I agree. Lawyers in general often make terrible politicians. They understand everything with process and detail, but cannot offer visions and judge the mood of their voters without 'the facts'.
Blair seemed to do alright, so it's not always a bad thing